Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences is the natural continuation and consolidation of TSE’s initiative to create conditions to promote interdisciplinary research, instigated in 2011 by Nobel Prize laureate Jean Tirole through the creation of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
The Department is the academic home both for economists – in behavioral economics, cultural economics, economic history, law and economics, and political economy – and for scholars in other social and behavioral sciences, such as evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary biology, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology.
The aim is to foster groundbreaking interdisciplinary research, not only between economics and other disciplines, but also between other disciplines.
The Department will also develop multi-disciplinary teaching programmes.
In sum, the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences provides a unique environment to push the frontiers of economics and several other disciplines within the unified scientific project on which IAST was built, namely to study the behavior of human beings as evolved biological organisms who live in groups, form networks and coalitions, are governed by formal institutions, informal norms, and religious and cultural practices, produce and exchange scarce resources and are inspired by ideals and beliefs.
The Department will keep close ties with IAST, notably through joint seminar series, and also through IAST’s Research Fellow and Visiting Fellow programs.
Job Opportunities
The Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) regularly offers jobs for Postdoctoral Researchers with a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, or related disciplines.
Faculty and Research Fellows
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Karine Van der Straeten
IAST/TSE Research Faculty
Senior Researcher CNRS & Managing Director, Jean-Jacques Laffont - TSE Foundation
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Pablo José Varas Enríquez
Post-Docs, Engineers and Assistants
IAST Research Fellow, PhD in Anthropology
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Summer School 2026
The Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences at Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) offers an interdisciplinary program in the social and behavioral sciences. The summer school is open to PhD students in economics and other disciplines.
Seminars and Conferences
Past
Food insecurity and changing food preferences in times of compounding crisis: A new evaluation of the insurance hypothesis
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 26 May 2026
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Place Auditorium 5 (Second Floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Luseadra Joy McKerracher
Détails
Past
Do Political Representation Gaps Cause Populism? Evidence from the 2025 German Election
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Seminar
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IAST Lunch Seminar
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Date 22 May 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Laurenz Guenther
Détails
Past
Rents and Reformation
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 19 May 2026
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Place Auditorium 5 (Second floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Mark Koyama
Détails
Past
Does Partisanship or Arguing Activate Political Motivated Reasoning?
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 12 May 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Andrew Little
Détails
Past
Dynamic Coordination with Local Information: How Networks Learn, Mislearn, and Converge
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Seminar
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IAST Lunch Seminar
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Date 17 April 2026
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Place Auditorium 6 ( ground floor - TSE building)
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Speaker or organiser Juan D. Carrillo
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Past
What if you see it? Workers’ perceptions of and reactions to Generative AI
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 14 April 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Aina Gallego
Détails
Past
Institutions and the cultural evolution of cooperation: Insights from Oaxaca, Mexico
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Seminar
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IAST Lunch Seminar
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Date 10 April 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (first floor -TSE building)
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Speaker or organiser Cameron Curtin
Détails
Past
Bereavement Multipliers: Levels and Sources of Crossnational Differences in Losing Close Family
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 7 April 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Diego Alburez-Gutierrez
Détails
Past
Parenting through adversity: social, parental and intergenerational effects on individual life histories in a wild primate
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 31 March 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Susan Alberts
Détails
Past
Weapons of Mass Production. World War I and the Modernization of the French Economy
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Seminar
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IAST Lunch Seminar
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Date 27 March 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Victor Gay
Détails
Past
Ownership Psychology, Its Evolutionary Background and Social Ecology
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Seminar
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IAST General Seminar
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Date 24 March 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Pascal Boyer
Détails
Past
When to learn from elders or peers: unraveling the factors shaping the evolution of exemplar age choice
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Seminar
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IAST Lunch Seminar
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Date 20 March 2026
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Place Auditorium 4 (First floor - TSE Building)
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Speaker or organiser Ludovic Maisonneuve
Détails
Contact
Jean-François Bonnefon
Department Chair
Jonathan Stieglitz
Scientific Deputy Director
Kristin Michelitch
Teaching Deputy Director
Last news
Économie du désordre mondial (Economy of Global Disorder) : A Best-Seller That Fuels Public Debate
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Corporate
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Research
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TSE Research
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Development
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Social and Behavioral Sciences
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Economics